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But wait, there's more! It turns out that several years ago Norman Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School suggested that epicatechin is so important it should be considered a vitamin. He studied the Kuna people of the San Blas islands off the coast of Panama, who drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week, and found that the risk of stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna -- but as explained in another paper, "this protection is lost upon migration to mainland Panama City .... Island-dwelling Kuna consumed an average of 3–4 cups of cocoa per day. Those living on the mainland consumed on average <4 cups per week."

Natural cocoa powder would be a good supplement to dark chocolate, since it also has a high concentration of flavanols (and antioxidant activity in general) without the extra calories and fat. The concentration is much higher in lighter, more boldly flavored natural cocoa powder than in the darker, milder flavored "Dutch processed" or "processed with alkali" powders.

(In this page from Hershey's, scroll down to the table at the bottom.)

More research on chocolate's brain benefits! Cocoa polyphenols keep nerve cells from dying.

"Our studies indicate for the first time the cocoa polyphenols do not act only as mere anti-oxidant but they, directly or indirectly, activate the BDNF survival pathway counteracting neuronal death" says Annamaria Cimini of the University of L'Aquila… [emphasis mine]